Windows Tips
Finding Information
Hardware
Right-click on your My Computer icon in Windows Explorer. There are two choices on the resulting menu – Properties and System Information – which give you dialogue boxes with heaps of useful information about your system and memory..
Display
Right-click on a blank area of your desktop and select Properties from the menu. The dialogue box, which pops up, has lots of useful information about your display and enables you to make changes to your desktop appearance.
This Dialogue Box is covered in great detail here:
Windows Display Properties.
What’s This?
When you have a dialogue box open, right click on items to bring up a what’s this? label. Click on the label for more detailed information. Try it out by opening the Print Dialogue Box - CTRL + P.
You can also access "What's This?" by clicking on the little question mark button at the top right of most dialogue boxes and then click on the object you wish to know about.
Right Clicking for More Enlightenment
Pressing the right button on the mouse with the pointer over any object brings up a menu of choices of actions, functions, or properties. Useful when you're confused, lost or just curious.
Taming the Desktop
Undo Desktop Actions
Right click on a vacant area of the desktop and choose Undo from the pop-up menu. This is a multi-level undo function (which only appears when there is something to undo) and it’s invaluable if you’ve done some folder deleting incorrectly.
Accelerator Keys
Sometimes keystrokes are more convenient to use than the mouse. Menu items usually have one letter underlined, which indicates the accelerator key. Use this letter in combination with the ALT key to open that menu. There are accelerator keys for the cascading menu options too but you don’t need to use ALT for these.
If you don't see any underlined letters on your Menu Bar, it's because the Hide underlined letters for keyboard navigation until I press the ALT key option has been selected. If you want to change that: right click on the Desktop, select the Appearance tab, click on the Effects button, and deselect the appropriate checkbox.
Or just leave it and press the ALT key!
More Hard disk Space
If your hard disk is filling up you can free up a lot of space by reducing the size of your recycle bin.
Right click on the Recycle Bin icon with your mouse, choose Properties from the pop-up menu and drag the slider to a lower value. 2% of the drive should be enough if you're really stuck. Raid the piggy bank, you need a bigger hard drive.
